If you receive your electricity bill from Ameren Illinois every month you may start to notice a decrease in the bill.
Starting October first customers who get their power from Ameren Illinois, and not a third party, will be seeing a rate of 5.038 cents per kilowatt-hour for 800 kilowatt-hours. After that, the rate drops again to 4.379 cents per kilowatt-hour.
For residential users, that is a decrease of 18.3% than this time last year.
The price change will have no effect on residents who get their energy supplied from a third party, even if you still utilize Ameren for the transmission.
Jim Chilsen is a spokesman for Citizen’s Utility Board. He says that there some door-to-door salesmen using aggressive tactics to try and switch customers to their plan, which may be more expensive.
“We’ve gotten a lot of reports of high-pressure sales tactics. We’ve also gotten a lot of reports from people who said ‘it seemed like a good deal when I first signed up and then after a month or two the price went through the roof, and my bill went through the roof. So, people should know the bottom line is that going to be very difficult for any of these alternative suppliers going door-to-door to beat Ameren Illinois’ price, so buyer beware.”
In Galesburg, residents actually can take advantage of negotiated reduced rates through Homefield Energy at 4.921 cents per kilowatt-hour.
Ameren Illinois says they don’t profit from a markup in electricity costs and that a decrease is due to reforms in the yearly electricity auction held by Midcontinent Independent System Operator, the power grid operator in 15 states.
